


notes on a theme

by Handful_of_Silence



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: AU - the wings aren't the only thing about them that's different, Character Study, Eldritch Forms, Inhumanity, M/M, No Plot/Plotless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-02 06:25:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18805549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Handful_of_Silence/pseuds/Handful_of_Silence
Summary: After six-thousand odd years playing human, Crowley is beginning to suspect they've both gone a bit native.





	notes on a theme

In a garden that has just learned about rain, two beings that are not human get acquainted.

They've both been, technically, tasked with watching over the freshly exiled humans, but this is turning out to be rather uninteresting. Both humans are sleeping rather soundly for creatures who have just dramatically been introduced to the concepts of Good, Evil and Eviction all in one day. Crawly thinks it might have something to do with the marathon bout of strenuous physical exertion they'd been engaging in before they dropped off to sleep. He'd glanced over for a bit, but it had all looked a bit biological, not quite something that took his fancy. The Angel of the Eastern Gate had reddened like the recently christened tomato, blustered and fluffed up his magnificent wings, and co comically done everything in his power not to look short of detaching his own eyes, and that had been more entertaining in the long run.

The demon, who even now is not quite so demonic as he ought to be, shakes out his char-marked feathers with a roll of his shoulders, frowns at the novel sensation of water pattering on skin. He had jumped and made a small shriek when the first rumble of thunder creaked across the sky, and was now very dedicatedly not reacting to any subsequent noises out of a mixture of pride and embarrassment. The angel, who would one day be able to confess to himself that he wasn't quite as angelic as he was made to be, has politely cast his wings over the demon as a tussled barrier to the rain. He is still trying to get used to the body he was assigned. His legs are a little wobbly at times, but he is quietly revelling in the novel sensation of having fingers. He flexes them experimentally, like he's playing air-piano.

This is the moment he discovers that if he rubs his middle finger and thumb together very quickly, it makes a clicking noise.

He is _delighted._

“Crawley!” he whispers excitedly. Forgetting that he is in the company of a wily and insidious enemy agent. “Look, look at this!”

The demon glances over with a honed look of disinterest. He hasn't quite come up with the concept of cool, but he's started drawing up the prototype for it, and he says “Oh, yeah, that thing,” with a tone that sounds like a handwave, as though he's known about it all along. He tries to do it and fumbles. The angel, who hasn't quite invented the concept of long-suffering fondness, inadvertently displays one of the first instances of the eye roll as he demonstrates again so the demon can see how it's done.

They don't have a lot in common to talk about. This – even now – isn't exactly true. They have lots in common, but no one has yet had the great idea of fermenting grains or fruits for intentional consumption and both of them have their own baggage about their lot in life. They don't talk about Hell – the demon seems rather blasé about it, as though it bores him to discuss it, and the angel gets shirty in a slightly defensive way when the topic gets onto Heaven. They talk about the Earth, about the new animals, the couple asleep by a flaming sword, and the conversation ebbs and flows comfortably.

They dip into a silence as the rain begins to die off. The angel is thinking, with tentative, nervous thoughts, that the demon isn't exactly what he was expecting. The demon is thinking the same thing about the angel.

They stand and watch the two people outside of Eden, and they're already a little too human for their own good.  


* * *

 

Anthony J. Crowley – middle name known only to one Central London part-time book dealer, and only because he'd lost a bet – is a creation Crowley is proud of. It's the sort of pride shared by parents who put their infant child's finger paintings on the fridge, or a forty-something man in the throes of a particular manifestation of the mid-life crisis whereby any minor triumph over the Man is expected to be heralded like Leicester City's victory in the Premier League. He's spent centuries of careful craftsmanship, layering his form like existential paper mache. The process might have – on the outside – appeared to be effortless and streamlined, but Crowley has worked hard to make it look that way, to affect a disinterest in the finished product as though his hair has naturally grown that way, his cheekbones framing his face just so, his lips that particular shade of red.

It goes without saying that internally, he hasn't approached this with anything that has remotely resembled disinterest. Like most artists, or someone over-invested in their Sims avatar, he's anxiously ummed and ahhed over every minor detail, had some weird periods of stylistic experimentation that he looks back on with mortification, and preens shamelessly whenever someone – Aziraphale – warmly compliments the finished product. He bears his trappings of humanity like a badge of honour he's put in the hours to earn, like a proud collector of some esoteric detritus who spends weekends hunting in car boot sales and antique fairs, who has a whole room in their house dedicated to showing off their finds. Crowley's whole life is his show-off room, his notable and self-satisfied shrine to the pleasure of being human.

It's not just the Bentley or his swish apartment or his fancy and impractical watch. It's his approving hum when he's taken a sip of wine that sets his meal off just right, it's a tap of his foot to the music in his car, it's his habits, both cultivated (his easy swagger, his casual air of mild interest about everything) and unconscious (the soft, surprising smile that blooms on his face, that still always knocks him slightly, whenever Aziraphale beams at him.)

Crowley's form is a construct that carries his essence around. In this respect, it's about as relevant to the process as the wrapping paper around a Christmas present – nice to look at, an important part of the presentation, but ultimately when the big day comes round it's going to get ripped off and chucked in a bin bag. He's a demon. Yet he wasn't always a demon either. And his form on Earth, it's a niche he's carved out in the world, a carefully thought out representation of himself. And after six thousand odd years, there's not much about either his construct, or the essence of personality and character stuffed inside, that hasn't shifted or altered or changed or adapted.

There's a philosophical proposition called the Ship of Theseus. Looking at the story bare-bones, it's about a ship, obviously, which goes out to sea on voyages, which explores and fights and comes back again and again, constantly damaged in some way. And those at port over the years labour their love on this battered fighting vessel which doesn't know when to quit, replacing planks and rigging and sails, devotedly updating and fixing it every time it returns to port, limping and triumphant. And after a while, there is no inch, no nail, no sliver of wood that remains the same. So then, ask the philosophers, who are always one for big questions and few answers, what made the ship the ship in the first place, and is it still the same ship now with all of its facets replaced and its ship-ness renovated into being unrecognizable. 

Crowley thinks about this a lot.  


* * *

 

 Aziraphale's body is almost exactly like most people's bodies. Crowley is inordinately fond of his form, and tells him sincerely and often. It's a slightly fragile vessel of squishy vulnerable things, and like his clothes or his possessions, he has taken a scattered approach of adopting what he sees and likes over the centuries.

He carries a pillowed rounded weight to his limbs and stomach that gives under Crowley's hands, he has mismatched dimples and a scattered shower of freckles over his nose and upper back when the sun manages to catch him out. He has a long striking nose that might once have been called Roman, downturned slightly at the end, and an open toothy smile with a gap between his two front teeth. He has the etchings of crow's feet at the corner of his eyes, smile lines at the boundaries of his lips, and a body that has always seemed perpetually middle-aged, and despite these disparate choices, the ensemble suits him. Every part of his appearance has been considered and chosen, Crowley knows. Aziraphale looks nothing like the other angels, even when they don human form to descend to Earth. Their forms are carefully bland, unmemorable and cookie-cutter regular, chosen to fit in and be forgotten equally easily.

Then again, there's nothing quite like Aziraphale anywhere.

His body looks lived in, and defiantly human.

Almost, anyway.  


* * *

 

The thing is that, sometimes, people can tell.

In the early days, it was harder. Because humans have so many tics and functions and quirks, and even pretending to mimic these on the surface is a masterclass in method acting. Crowley used to forget to blink for long periods of time, and was one of the reasons why he first started manifesting the glasses. Aziraphale would sit, just too still, undisturbed by time or wind or hunger, lacking any of the restlessness that would make his vigils less unsettling, a jostle of his knee, a creaking shift in position, a roll of his shoulders to stretch out. Crowley had to take Aziraphale aside, one night in Herculaneum, and teach him how to eat properly. Aziraphale's methodology had been gradually vanishing it from his plate, giving the impression of using his mouth without ever opening it and Aziraphale had testily admitted later that he hadn't quite got the hang of the whole mouth business, alright, there was no need to rub his nose in it, and really what was all the fuss about food anyway.

But they have an air to them. An aura if you will that marks them out as different. And sometimes people notice.

Aziraphale, to his eternal dismay and irritation, attracts people to him.

This is not to say that people aren't attracted to Crowley. Humans are drawn in by the demonic as well as the divine. And for all Crowley complains, and Aziraphale for the most part half-heartedly defends unless he's got a few glasses of red in him, humans aren't for the most part, entirely stupid. Sure, they're responsible for things like single-use plastics, sexism, and inordinately expensive pieces of technology that are very light, easy to drop and immensely breakable, but they do sense that there are things beyond them. Some half-dozing simian part of them recognises him for what he is, and humans love Crowley. His entire aesthetic and manifested aura of mystique draws them in, a shiny bauble of light hanging invitingly in the dark depths. People want to get closer to him, to poorly flirt, to take what he offers them. He's like a beautifully shimmering poison bottle, a flower with obscured thorns under preening petals, something gleaming at the bottom of a dark well.

This is unintentional for the most part, the form and influence he was gifted as a prize for his Fall; humans sense something of what he is, what he represents, spiritually speaking, and maybe they sense that he stands for something they shouldn't want but they reach out for anyway. This part makes Crowley honestly rather uncomfortable because he'd usually rather be left alone than have to deal with a human who thinks he can lead him to the next big sin. It's not without its perks however, and Crowley would be lying (and often does) if he said he didn't enjoy the attention sometimes. Flashing an impression of needle-thin teeth, permitting his body to sidle with the sinuous implication that he has too many bones that twist wrong under the skin, his shadow stretching and thinning in incorrect places in a certain light, and watching a brief faltering smile even as they lean in closer.

Aziraphale, well, it's a little different.  


* * *

 

“I'm cheating on my girlfriend,” their waiter says that night as she brings over a plate of naan bread.

Aziraphale blinks.

“Well...” he says awkwardly. He suddenly becomes fascinated with the napkin arrangement on their table. He looks over at Crowley. Crowley shrugs and leans over to help himself to a papadum. “You should... not do that, erm...” He squints at her name badge. “Abala.”

Abala gives a sigh of relief at that, like she was waiting for him to respond with any demonstration of acknowledgement, and sits down at the empty chair at their table. Aziraphale's glances over at Crowley have now become rather demanding calls for him to do something, to ward off what they both know is coming, and Crowley's smug crunching is a resounding nope.

“It's... look, I love her and all, but....” the poor woman begins, and what follows is a fifteen minute detailed history of the relationship, the aforementioned girlfriend's new job in Birmingham, trying out the long-distance thing, and a few mistaken fumbles with strangers in the cloakrooms of various clubs. The woman can't seem to help herself, it all comes spilling out like a leaky tap finally giving.

By the end, Aziraphale's portion of naan has gone cold, he's spent his time nodding and gritting his teeth and making 'I see' noises at the correct moments, giving Crowley dead eyes over the table, and now he's uncomfortably giving the woman a pocket handkerchief so she can dry her eyes and dab away any make-up that's ran.

“There there,” Aziraphale is saying rather mechanically, eyeing his naan with a resigned dismay. There must be something in the air today; on no less than three separate occasions today he's been accosted by a shop assistant, a trainee manicurist, and now this sniffling woman who needs to learn about open and honest communication a bit more rather than necking with strangers because she misses her girlfriend.

Aziraphale doesn't tell her this exactly, but it's the gist of it.

After many years of wondering what exactly it was about some fussy middle-aged bachelor that made people want to pour the contents of their heart out, Crowley thinks he has it cracked. It's partly because Aziraphale, as an angel oozes with a sickening level of love for all man and divine charity and mercy, but he reckons it's down to the fact that people on some level, recognise there's something slightly off about him. It was while he watched a shop assistant nervously sharing his wife's pregnancy scare while Aziraphale had tried to purchase a single malt that he figured it. Humans worry so much about what others think, so they pour their laboured hearts out to this being who nods like he understands, who has the aura that whatever they tell him his comprehension won't falter, that in the scheme of things, their small troubles and heartaches pale into insignificance in light of the cosmic order of things. They're always relieved when they finished. They stagger away, pounds lighter, like they've whispered their worst secrets to the vast darkness and the vast darkness has nodded politely in response and carried on with its day.

“Thank you _very_ much for your input,” Aziraphale bites waspishly after Abala gives her eyes a final wipe, shoots Aziraphale a grateful and watery smile and goes to answer the summons from table seven.

“You seemed to have it under control,” Crowley teases, and he enjoys Aziraphale's prim little frown . He miracles the naan bread hot again as an apology.  


* * *

 

“I've been thinking,” Crowley says, and Aziraphale gives a huffy little sigh that means he's working his way up to being annoyed and is currently hovering around mildly peeved. This is because he has been trying to read for about half an hour, and Crowley is clearly in a petty mood and wants the angel's attention instead. A carefully planned bombardment is occurring; Crowley weakening enemy defences with light sighs, listless looks, and inching his body closer and closer against Aziraphale so he is practically on top of him. The heat he's radiating is making Crowley dozy, pliant and loose, and his limbs are a bit more flexible than they should be. 

“About birthdays,” Crowley continues because Aziraphale isn't biting.

“What about them?”

Aha! Crowley tries not to look smug as a tendril of Aziraphale's attention is granted to his questioning instead.

“About why we don't have them.”

“You know why we don't have them.” Aziraphale's eyes are still on his book.

“And I think it's unnecessarily exclusionary.”

“Neither of us... well, let's just say neither of us were of woman born, my dear.”

“Being created out of raw firmament must count as some kind of birth, is all I'm saying. We weren't there one minute, next, we were. Birth.”

“And then there's the matter of the date,” Aziraphale's relaxed his form somewhat, and pupil-less eyes the colour of blueish veins flick over at Crowley. “Which calender do you suggest we use to calculate this?”

Crowley lets out an annoyed little puff of air.

“Forget it!” he says, a trite more peevishly than he wanted to, and settles against Aziraphale, basking in the heat, as the angel goes back to reading his book. It was a dumb idea anyway.

After a moment, Aziraphale picks up his bookmark and slots it carefully between the pages, setting the book down on the coffee table. The room is warm, uncomfortably hot for anyone unlike them. The angel is pushing out heat like a furnace, a small glimpse at the burning blaze of Heaven. Hell, what with its propaganda of flames and burning pits and fiery torments, has always been trying to compensate.

“Pick a date,” he says, fixing his eyes on Crowley. He's smiling indulgently with that gap-toothed grin of his.

“What?”

“A date. Choose one. That'll be your birthday.”

“You- Really?”

“Hmm.”

“August,” Crowley says after a moment. “The twelfth”

“A good choice,” Aziraphale nods agreeably.

“You want one?” Crowley asks in reply.

There is a thoughtful sound.

“Why not. Seems like it might be a lark. Umm... August....”

“You can't have August.”

“Why ever not?”

“I'm in August. No point in us both having a birthday in the same month. Spread out the celebration you see?”

“Oh, alright, you greedy thing,” Aziraphale retorts, but his annoyance is belied by the way he runs his fingers through Crowley's hair. “May. Umm... the fifth.”

“You just chose May so you can feel older than me.”

“Oh, hush, you impossible thing,” Aziraphale beams with the impression he hasn't moved his lips to do so, and Crowley smiles back, mouth full of teeth, and plans his birthday present.

 

* * *

 

 

Crowley doesn't often show his true form. As a rule, he never does. And it's partly because of his own private nerves surrounding transformation – things with maggots and dripping teeth and lidless eyes are all well and good, but then he slides back into his two-armed, two-legged besuited body and he feels settled in a way he doesn't feel elsewhere. Sure, his original form was quite impressive, scaly and immense, shadowed in flame and crowned with a wreath of space that should not be there, of light refracting wrong off the glint of shapes that could be called limbs. It's cool looking in a brain-grilling, godless sort of way. But it's not him.

He tries to talk to Aziraphale about it once. Aziraphale, who has never quite been able to hide in his human body as well.

He does well enough outside, but when they're alone, he drops the pretence like laden shopping bags that have been digging into his hands, dumped unceremoniously by the front door. He takes up space, is the issue. There is the impression that he stretches out, that his body is a poor container for him, his light leaking through a membrane, and sometimes Crowley can feel the space he takes up, how he envelopes the room, his body not ending with his body. How when Aziraphale looks at him, there is the sensation of too many eyes gazing affectionately upon him.

They're in the middle of arguing about snakes, when he does. Crowley's sloshed wine onto his sleeve, and Aziraphale's gone a pleasing tipsy pink in the face. The current argument is that when Crowley transforms, he becomes a snake-like creature, rather than an actual snake. Aziraphale cites his changeable-bloodedness (he's not cold-blooded, not biologically speaking, not unless he wants to be), the fact that he eats and drinks normal regular human food – with difficulty, and with a noticeable lack of table manners – and the fact his ears work perfectly. Crowley, in a spirited defence, responds with the damning criticisms that everything Aziraphale knows about snakes comes from half-remembering nature documentaries and so he's not exactly an expert, that if Crowley says he's a snake, then he's a snake, and anyway, angel, when did you last transform into a beast of the land or sea, hmm, where's your expertise on the matter, and that seems to win the argument for him.

He takes another sip, and broaches it.

“Do you ever miss it?”

“Miss what, dear?”

“Being... being how we were created. Our original essences if you like. Not bound to these forms.”

“It's not like we're trapped, you know.” Aziraphale gives him a slightly cock-eyed, disapproving look, swaying slightly.

“I know!” Crowley says defensively, because the angel as usual isn't listening. “I just sometimes think... I'm happier like this. More than I ever was as a demon. Come to think of it, more than I ever felt as an angel – no offence.” Aziraphale tips his glass towards him as though to forgive the slight. “Maybe we've just gotten used to them.” He tails off lamely.

“I...” Aziraphale clearly has to think for a moment. “I forget I suppose. That we aren't... and it's remarkably easy to. And if you twisted my arm about it... it would be nice to have the wings out more often, and two eyes are simply limiting whatever way you spin it, but then again....”

He's clearly drunker than Crowley thought, because he stops like someone's pressed pause so he can think. Crowley can feel the edges of him lapping around them like a babbling brook from the other side of the table.

“Humming,” he says finally, with a self-satisfied expression.

“Humming?”

“Hmm,” Aziraphale says, looking pleased. “Because usually, I can't. What with the...” he gestures at his face as if to indicate some facet about his ethereal form that's lacking. Crowley nods.

“Whistling,” he adds, because it's hard with his teeth in their normal state, and Aziraphale moves his head like a nodding dog.

“Exactly!” he says, like the fact that Crowley gets it is illuminating him from the inside. His skin can sometimes get a bit porous when drunk, and light seeps out like a spillage. Sometimes, when he reaches out for the bottle, there is the shadowed implication of more than one arm. “And – and eating! That's great too!”

“Drinking.”

“Having fingernails.”

“Cracking your knuckles.”

“Dancing!”

“You can't dance, angel.”

“This is true,” Aziraphale concedes, before his face splits in a dopey grin. “It's jolly good fun though regardless.”

He pauses, and snaps his fingers together in a little click.

“I like being human,” he says softly. “More than I ever did being an angel. Is that... is that foolish of me?”

“Nah,” Crowley says. “I think it's just about right. An', look, I don't even think you are really an angel. Not a proper one. Haven't been for ages.”

Aziraphale's swam up through the swamp of various emotions to grasp at affront, and Crowley detours quickly when he sees a haughty, offended expression begin to evolve on his face.

“Hear me out,” he says, his point in his teeth and surging through. “In Tadfield? At the airbase. Remember when the boy's father nearly turned up.”

“I try not to, dear boy.”

“Remember,” Crowley says, ignoring him. “When it was hopeless. When you had... had your daft sword, and I had my... my bloody tire iron and we were going into a fight there was no way we could win.”

“Crowley...”

“What form did you take?”

“Wh-”

“You got your wings out,” Crowley continues, not waiting for an answer. “Wings and flaming sword and a soft, squishy human body. Don't you see?”

“I don't... I don't entirely follow my love.”

“You were human. In that moment, where by all rights we should have shucked off these bodies like pea shells, you didn't. Neither of us did. And it wasn't even that there were humans around, we could have shielded them so they didn't gaze upon our true forms and get their brains melted for the trouble. But we didn't. Don't you think, I don't know, that that means something?”

“But we aren't human,” Aziraphale starts, and Crowley interrupts with a dismissive wave of a hand.

“But we're more human than we should be,” he stresses. “You get it? All these years we've been here, we're different. We've changed, we're... we're ships and we've replaced the rigging and the sails over and over...”

“You've really lost me...”

“My point is that we're... we're something else, I think. Something new.”

Aziraphale looks at him, pupil-less eyes set in a normal face. Smile lines and dimples and an unkempt bush of hair tucked behind his ears.

“And what does that mean?” he asks.

Crowley shrugs, and finds he doesn't mind the answer so much.

“Dunno. Guess we get to find out.”  


* * *

 

There's a being that might once have been an angel that lives in Soho. He exudes love and goodwill, he gives off the impression of a gleaming immensity, and when his wings catch the light, they streak with colours the human eye can't see, that no one has names for. He sometimes forgets to breathe and can stand with the unerring quiet of snowfall. He also likes taking strolls and nattering with locals, and he's partial to humming while he reads. He's also taken up embroidery, and to the dismay of his partner, has become quite adept at it. He keeps hinting that they should adopt a cat, and is confident he'll be able to convince his partner one day. 

His partner might once have been a demon, has snake-like eyes, moves with the impression he has too many bones inside his body, and sometimes his shadow doesn't follow him like it should. He likes drinking, and taking care of his plants, and took a class of beatboxing once before he realised how uncool he looked doing it. He would like to adopt a cat, but is holding out because he wants to see how long it takes for his partner to realise.  He really enjoys whistling to confuse the birds.

They are something, altogether, quite new.

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of three fics ( ~~and the only one I've gotten around to finishing ffs~~ ) that were inspired by that one post on tumblr that talks about Aziraphale being an eldritch being in the shape of a friend. If I find the post, I'll link.


End file.
